Children screaming on planes...

It’s not always that we write for others. Sometimes the words that color the page are simply for ourselves. The thoughts we write help us understand who we are. Josh and I drove from Joplin to Kansas City last night, we talked about a lot, sometimes we actually spoke. But, interaction always takes place even when we are silent. We talked about how interesting humans can be… how strange we are. We are always so fascinated when we learn something new about ourselves. When we recognize a pattern or behavior that leads us to understand our own selves. It can take years, ironically, for us to understand even the simplest of things about us. I suppose that this is the broken relationship between man and himself. We go through these sort of self-destructive stages that eventually lead us into adulthood.

As children, we have no understanding that we should want to be any different than we are. And so we just say whatever we think, speak our minds, even with jibberish. We love who we love and we behave instinctively.

We get a little older, and the cruel reality sets in that we will not be allowed to continue in our courageous naivety. And a lack of sureness about who we are develops. We act out, misbehave, and cry for no reason. Is it possible that even as children we feel the weight of a broken world?

By our adolescence we believe we are not who we should be. So, we pretend to be someone else we think we should be, denying the entire time our own beliefs, our own affections, our own thoughts. We adopt the popular culture as our personality. Those who don’t are marginalized…

High school comes around and we have all become professionals at pretending we aren’t who we are. Some of us have even forgotten who we really are and our personalities become so fluid we could be anyone… and no one. Something itches to escape though, something that says we’d really rather be experiencing the things we deeply enjoy. Instead of listening to the music that puts us in a box of accepted society, or using the colloquialisms that fit us into our generation, something in us asks if maybe, possibly, we could just do the things that actually make us happy? I didn’t realize in highschool I was even doing this. I was always different, I never wanted to be who others told me. But I still acquiesced to this idea that I needed to suppress the wild child in me that could only produce irresponsibility and regret. How wrong they were. Due to the hot pursuit of a crazy God I finally realized…

Then college. Most of us finally come to that place where we throw out all of the facades that have been our crutch for so many years. Excitement at the prospect of just saying “f--- it” and being who we are. Going where we want, developing not into the model citizens our social constructs sent us the blueprints for, but instead into people with passions, opinions, goals, and individuality, who are part of a bigger community, maybe even a meta-narrative… we have a better way of being: raw. Josh made the observation: this is adulthood. This moment when we still have questions, but we have laid to rest our games of pretend, and taken hold of our own imagination and creativity, to love and be who we are.

But some never do. And the weight of an image that doesn’t fit their spirit remains the back stabbing friend of those who have lost their courage and the sight to grow out of the oppression of a culture that demands a globalized personality to its citizens.

This will label me a tree hugger for sure...

In the course of a question game with a friend with an imaginative mind, the challenge was posed to me: describe a tree. Simple enough I suppose. Unless you want anyone reading to be able to climb through the branches in their imagination, and know the tree like they're there. This small story was getting dusty just sitting on my computer so I'm blogging it... it's really just a rant, an outpouring of imagination and creation.

To smell, hear, see and touch a tree is like experiencing creation. It is unexplainable. The sap that is unwashable, staining your favorite jeans, and sticking in your hair. The small branches you didn't see that hit your face, and make your eyes water uncontrollably. Or, the unsteady branch that gives way when a child is too reckless. The spiders and ants that flow out of crevices in the tree, using its resources to continue their busy preoccupied lives. The smell of pine cones, and pine needles that seems to linger beyond the forest. Or the simplicity of the mechanics of helicopter seeds, dancing to the ground to begin new life... a glimpse of new creation, those seeds, sheltered in their vessel, disrupted by the chubby fingers of a child and their mother, exploring the fall ground.

Peeling the white bark of a birch, not realizing as a child that skinning the slender tree was killing it. How can curiosity be disruptive? I suppose the trees just smirk through their pain that children can be so unknowing. The callouses on barefeet that fade only in winter, from grasping at the thick bark and low branches, to hoist oneself up from a sad existence attached only to the ground. A restorative pain when your hands are bleeding from swinging from the branches. Fueling our essays and our newspapers by providing the last of their usefulness to an uncurious city. But, in the woods, no one dares look down. Only, the utmost respect and adventure to look up, and feel that childhood inspiration.

Good habits.

Sometimes I forget I have a blog. Well that's not entirely true. For the last 6 months I have felt I literally have had nothing good to say. I don't feel particularly different today. I just miss writing. There's something about being able to create something, a new combination of words no one has ever put together quite the same way, even if it's just a period in a different place, that is slightly addicting. I suppose lack of inspiration could be a product of learning nothing new, or maybe being overwhelmed from too much learning. Either way, I hate to just blog about my mind, I feel vain. So I will blog about a monastery.

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in silence and solitude up in Eureka Springs at a retreat center run by a monastery. On Sunday I got to go to mass at the monastery and was given a little history and tour of the place. I will tell you honestly I was floored. I've never quite experienced something like that. The monks and nuns were Franciscan but also Benedictine. They were so accepting and hospitable. And real. There was an awareness of reality, the importance of also being in the world, not just in their community. So their community consists of the monastic community up in Eureka Springs or other monasteries that have opened, and also the domestic members, who live all over America... and 3 or 4 other countries. And they had a grasp on something I see go misunderstood in my own denomination too often: non-denominational Christians do not have a monopoly on salvation. They are ecumenical and stand with wide open arms to begin healing the divisions that have formed in the church... not claiming they have everything right, but with humility and brotherly love. I was speechless (well mostly I was anyway because I had a weekend of "silence") at the beauty of their community. They had it right. We ostracize our celibates. We push our singles into marriage. We push our married couples to have children. And we put the families in our churches on a pedestal. They live together, all of these: celibates, singles, married, families. The celibates have families in their brothers and sisters, down to having a community kitchen with their singles brothers and sisters, because cooking and eating together fosters more community than anything I know in domestic life. The children in the community (in the words of Sister Carolyn) "are everyone's children... they have no idea how lucky they are to be loved by so many people." They don't. They are provided with more support and investment than most children. Their family lives will be complete. And the celibates, who will never have children of their own, get to nurture and parent children. It's beautiful.

As much as I wanted to stay, here I am in my dorm room. What I saw and experienced provoked questions that need answers. The more I look at life, the more I live life, the more I see that we all want reform. There is something in us that wants something better. We are to bring the Kingdom of God now. Praying the Lord's Prayer at Mass 3 times this weekend was a precious reminder that we are the answer. And, the inspiration for a new kind of life continues as God forms a picture of how He longs for His church to love in my heart and mind.

Writer's block conquered. Inner blogger back, fed for now, soon to be longing to write again.

Girls are not for sale

Girls are precious
Girls are smart
Girls are courageous
Girls are helpful
Girls are bold
Girls are beautiful
Girls are NOT for sale.

Girls are heroes. Rachel Lloyd of New York State is the founder of the only organization in NY that helps girls and young women who have been trafficked or sexually abused. GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services) has made huge strides in helping young women caught in trafficking to get out of "the life" and back to being just girls. Normal girls, who go to school and get married, who have children and are allowed to grow up. After all, the average age of girls trafficked in NYC is 13. Do you remember what you were doing when you were 13? I ran cross country and was on stage in the local theater. But, there are hundreds and thousands of New Yorkers who are being prostituted, played, and manipulated by pimps who swear they love them.

Girls are powerful. Rachel Lloyd knows what that is like. As a teenager, she also was sexually exploited. It only takes one girl to touch the lives of thousands. In 1999, she started GEMS, a one woman operation from her kitchen table. It has grown to be one of the largest organizations that provides aid and an alternative life to commercial exploitation of young women. Girls at GEMS are allowed to be girls. They are encouraged to remember their dreams, and to make the choices to get them there.

Girls are fighters. In 2007, a documentary by David Schisgall called Very Young Girls was produced outlining the stories of several girls who have been involved with GEMS and of the history of GEMS itself. It has won several awards for its inside look at girls in "the life" in NYC.

Girls are able. That's where Lloyd started. She came to the US as a missionary wanting to reach out to women exiting prostitution, and she found herself fulfilling her purpose. She has spoken to the UN, NYU and other prestigious universities, done profile interviews for major news stations and magazines and in 2006 won the Reebok Human Rights Foundation award. Her response to this award was : "This award recognizes for the first time publicly that the sexual exploitation of children in our country is a human rights issue. You look at places like the Philippines, and Thailand and the Ukraine and we talk about trafficking and sexual exploitation and yet when it's happening two blocks from this auditorium, when it's happening in Bedford Stuyvesant, or in Hudson Point or in Queen's Plaza, we look the other way. We recently saw the Academy Award for Best Song go to 'It's Hard out Here For a Pimp,' well let me tell you, it's hard out here for a 13 year old girl who has run away from home, who sells her body every night who is beat and raped by a man who is old enough to be her father, who is bought and sold by adult men."

Girls are not for sale.

I miss the Kerouac days...

It seems to me the more that I study the more I realize I am so hopelessly ignorant. In my ambition, I want to be able to read the most books, understand the most concepts and have the grades I find so appealing. And yet, that's not the point... For all my theological truth and all of my reason, I will not be changing the world. Of course, I think that there is value in education and learning, but if all I do is spend my time with books and papers, I will never see the truth, experience the truth I so avidly and passionately seek. It is in living the reasons I profess to believe that my life is changed and the lives around me are transformed.

I miss simplicity though. It feels like I am pressured to be able to name drop every famous philosopher and my favorite of their works. That's not why I study philosophy- it never has been. If the philosophy I know cannot teach what Jesus would have me say, it is useless. What are concepts and beliefs if they do not help me to die to myself a little bit more? What is my temporary pleasure and pride in the face of hopelessness that needs the solution I have? I read Kerouac, and for all his troubles and his pain, he had a simplicity of joy and contentment of being human about him. He was always running for the next thing, but his essence was alive, so human. He did not need the foundation of "intellectual snobbery" in order to change the lives around him, in order to grasp, understand, and be passionate about his purpose. What is it that I am missing?

I feel very affected by my culture, very oppressed by certain constructs and expectations. I feel I spend too much of my time defending why I do what I do, or say what I say, or even why I have such an outspoken character instead of being able to live these things. The burden of academia and society weigh heavy on my shoulders as I delve deeper into trying to understand the world around me. My hope is that I will be like Kerouac. May I dispose of society as a way of life and instead enjoy the beauty I find in it, as I freely continue my purposeful journey, running to whatever place will best help me to reflect Power in my weaknesses.

Avatar for real?

For too long we as an American population have chosen to be ignorant or silent in the face of issues involving companies in our own country. For the past 17 years, a lawsuit has been in trial against Chevron (Texaco) based on horrendous damage they did in the Amazon regions of Ecuador. Several indigenous tribes are on the brink of collapse due to contamination of water. Cancer is prevalent in their small groups, rancid 18-19 year old kids. Small children suffer from skin diseases because there is nowhere else to bathe but in water polluted with oil. Chevron designed a system which dumped crude waste right into riverbeds, streams, and pits dug in the areas. There is no clean water. There is no immediate access to healthcare for the poor living conditions and no money to pay for cancer treatments.

Each side has had their trials in presenting a clean case. Evidence the plaintiffs brought forward was not always supported by hard evidence. Their young lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, had only been a lawyer 1 year when he took the case over in 2003. More than 30,000 Ecuadorians are demanding that Chevron pay and clean up their damages. The defense has not argued a solid case either, and I have observed them using red herring after red herring to distract from the issue. The case which has been revealed to the public has Chevron pushing the blame all on the Ecuadorian oil company PetroEcuador (which partnered with Texaco and took over the oil company after they left the Amazon) and saying that the plaintiff only wants a profit. Which, ironically is what Chevron is being sued for.

This entire case breaks my heart. Because of the ambitions of American oil companies, the lives and cultures of the Ecuadorians have been exploited. Sure, the world runs on oil, but with such innovative means of preserving the environment we see propagated in the US, could we not have found a way to extract oil ethically? Is there not a way to avoid digging 627 pits to improperly dispose of waste in the rain forest? And why can companies not take responsibility for the damage they have done? Is the profit really worth so much more than the lives of the people who have succeeded in preserving a resource as precious as the Amazon for thousands of years? The trial is not finished yet, though the last judge involved in the case recommended that Chevron pay up to $27 billion in recompense. However, observers think that the case could go on for up to 8 more years, each side now attempting to undermine the case of the other. A new judge has yet to be appointed to rule on the case.

He who has no sin...

I watched a heart-wrenching movie last night titled The Stoning of Soraya M. It is the story of an Iranian woman with 4 children in an abusive marriage. I will not give away any "spoiler" details, but the woman, Soraya, is wrongly accused of cheating and stoned by her own family and town. The story was uncovered in 1994 by a French-Iranian journalist and turned into a book, later adapted into a movie. As I lay in bed and thought about the reality of oppression I cried. I thought about how many people in our reality are tortured by injustice and left to die.

I thought about the church, and I wondered where we have been. And, then I wondered if we can even do anything. I looked at the world and the way that we have twisted beauty and the things that used to be good, and I wondered if we can even do anything at all. I was overwhelmed by the amount of pain. But, most of all, I thought about the women. It's not that there are not men who are unjustly imprisoned and beaten. It's not that there are not men who are manipulated and pushed around. It's just that I am a woman, and I am free. And there are so many women who aren't. I lay in bed and I wondered about how many women have cried out to Allah to help them as they are stoned even today, how many women dig in trash piles to try to provide for their homeless families. I thought about the thousands of women roaming the streets in Red Light Districts and the women who climb up the corporate ladder just to rise above their lack of identity. And my heart breaks. What are we to do, in a society where it is acceptable and even expected that women are a sexual icon and a household hero? What are we to do when religion promises that women are inferior and deserve to be punished for their gender? What are we to do when there are no men to intervene and to protect the beautifully created woman from cultural slaughter?

I don't know.

And my last thoughts before I fell asleep were, what would Jesus have done if He had been there with Soraya M.? He was there, with a different woman, thousands of years ago. And he stood there, and He declared that the man without sin should throw the first stone. He delivered the "adulterous" woman from death, to life. He crossed the culture, and He stepped between her and the stones. He intervened. When, how, will we stand in between the stones and the condemned and not simply be horrified at the sight of blood?

I don't know. May God have mercy on me when I see, feel, and understand and do not move.